Here is a cool Blueprint of a 2005 WRC Subaru Impreza in Monte Carlo Rally Spec.
I found the Subaru Blueprint a long time ago on the web – not sure who deserves the image credit. If anyone knows let me know.
Ever since I was a little kid I was fascinated by night races. Regardless of what form of racing – night time racing has something very special to it.
Unforgettable moments of night racing are Rally Cars in the snow during the Sweden Rally, glowing brake discs and the super bright pitlane in backdrop to the dark Circuit de la Sarthe better known as the 24 hours of Le Mans.
Ever since we started Rally Cross racing our RC cars in our homemade backyard Rally tracks we knew that we had to race in the dark at some point. If you are following my blog you may know that I am not a big fan of buying off-the-shelve products to solve those fun engineering challenges.
The first stage in my RC car Rally Lights project was to build a simple prototype LED headlight array that would attach easily to the car. I opted to use Lego Technic pieces because 5mm LED’s fit perfectly. Plus if you drill out the pieces just a little bit you will find that they fit very nicely onto standard body mounting posts.
This LED Remote Control Car headlight array connects to the cars main battery Continue Reading »
Who will win?
1) Traxxas Nitro Monster Truck
2) HPI RS4 Rally Car on Brushless Lipo Setup
3) Kyosho Custom Stadium Truck
4) Tamiya DF03 RA with Stock Motor
The Traxxas Monster Truck has all the power in the world – but a high center of gravity requires the truck to go around Continue Reading »
Hooray!!! I finally finished the track extension gaining a solid 70 feet of track. I ended up using a lot more space then what I outlined in my original post.
Here is a satellite view of the new track layout with the addition.
Building a Slotcar version of my RC Rally track was the next logical bound to happen thing to do after building a drive able computer game version of the rc track.
A designed the track based on my measurements using the Carrera Slotcar Track Planner. Unfortunately we only have the “cheap” Carrera Go track – which actually has lot of potential when you replace the stock power supply with an adjustable lab power supply, replace the throttle controller with some old-school Carrera Servo 140 controllers and hook the whole thing up to your computer for some accurate lap timing.
Here is my modified Carrera Slotcar Power-Control-Timing Setup:
Here is the Carrera Slotcar Track-Planner Render:
Here is a my RC backyard track re-created in Torcs to be enjoyed on a PC or Linux machine near you :-)
Simply download Torcs, install it, unpack the backyard3.zip file and move the folder into your torcs dirt track folder.
Watch the Video of my Torcs RC Car Track here or read the blog post here.
Here are some Torcs RC car track screenshots:
It seemed like a fun idea to build a drive-able computer car racing game based on our R/C backyard track and our Subaru Tamiya Rally car. Needless to say that it does not come even close to any of today’s Xbox360 or PS3 games, but that wasn’t the point in the first place. Driving my own track on the computer while looking at the “real thing” out of the window still makes me happy :-)
With the initial experience and all the measurements taken I am really tempted to build the whole thing on XNA Express to make it playable on the 360. I am afraid they will have released 3 new models of the 360 until I figure it all out though…
We finally had some decent rain which allowed me to run the RC car in the mud, dirt and rain. However, due to the high amount of clay in our soil the whole race track turned into a gigantic slip and slide. The car had absolutely no Continue Reading »
Everyone with a Tamiya model in North America has the chance to win little prices once a month by submitting their car, truck or military model to the builder showcase.
The drawing for first price is random, so don’t be disappointed if your model is the best looking but didn’t win.
Click on the photolink of my Subuaru WRC in the mud to check out the Tamiya Builders Showcase.
Infomation on how to submit your model can be found on the Tamiya website.
Finally a little bit of rain and some mud on the track. Rally racing is just so much more fun in the rain.
Take a look at the RC Rally pictures of the day.
This video shows the corners and jumps in slowmotion, and the rest of the track at actual speed.
This video show the RC Rally car at normal speed. The average lap time is 18 seconds. Check out the timing page for more details.
